


Returning

by Cyath



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 15:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14572074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyath/pseuds/Cyath
Summary: Lost within Unit-01's consciousness, Ikari Yui dreams.





	Returning

*****

She was floating. Floating in blackness. All around, the total absence of light, an abyss whose depths stretched farther than she could perceive. Oblivion. Darkness. 

That was nothing new, really. She had grown accustomed to the different experiences she’d had to face since the…change. The rational scientist part of her delighted in this. So what if she never got back? Here was new ground, new territory that no one had ever explored, probably would never explore. And she was here. 

Here, not there. That was the other problem.

But there was other parts of her, their calls equally strong. What about the ones you love, they cried. Will you leave them behind? What of them, what of their fates? It hurt her to think like this. She did so want to return, sometimes. Needed to. At those times the blackness seemed to constrict her, bind her even more fully.

Then the other feelings. The strange, alien emotions that came and went, primal urges that summoned half-formed images out of the ether, appearing yet not fully existing in the void, in this space null-space, this oblivion between worlds. They spoke strangely, their words full of portents and double meanings, sometimes appearing as humans, and yet at others as alien apparitions. She understood but parts of what they said, and even then it was unclear. An apocalypse, they whispered to her, amidst lilting, ethereal cries. Destruction. Salvation.

But the blackness it was, most of the time. That and herself.

Between worlds. There was another presence. One, familiar, yet distanced from herself by a great rift. She had tried to stretch out her limited consciousness towards it, in fact, felt a need to, but all she encountered was an expanse of sadness, of a bond broken. That most of all, the sensation of loss, so strong that she herself was swept up in it, and hope. But a worn and tired hope it was. 

The blackness swirled anew at times like this, and the voices spoke again. She did not heed them : she was too busy weeping for her son.

And there was yet another part, submerged within the strangely liquid consciousness she was suspended in. Bestial, feral. It seemed (why did everything seem? Why was nothing concrete?) to snap at the faint inquiring brushes her mind sent out to it, and growled and paced, angry in the cage it was imprisoned in. She could do nothing with it; it rejected all her overtures at communication. And after a while she began to doubt whether it was sentient. Or whether she still was.

Her husband. Strange that she did not think of him often. Was it the fact that she was here because of him? Or something else? Maybe the feelings that accompanied the shattered bond, the ones that spoke of hate, bewilderment and most of all, of love. Still love amidst all else. But those were not her. She did not even know who “her” was, now. Everything here was liquid, malleable, filled with emotion, of sensations that seemed to sing out to her very soul. Things felt, or simply were. That was why, perhaps. He had always disliked any show of feeling, anything not rooted in fact.

And then the darkness, still and calm, yet somehow restless as well. 

*****

One day. What was time here? One day, two, three…no way of knowing. A year might have passed. More.

Yet one day it changed.

It began with a slight ripple, a shudder, sending faint tremors through the fluid darkness. Then it turned red. The world became a bright crimson, light seeming to bleed through the shifting sky down onto her. She screamed, or she did not; she had not way of knowing. 

The bond, merging, changing, reaching out to her, needing her. She responded instinctively but a howl of primal exultation broke through her consciousness just then. She stopped, the feelings rushing through her, crashing against each other like high breakwaters, each counterpointing the other. Only then did she notice the sky. Light, for the first time in ages, shone down.

Blood poured down as well.

Adrift in a sea of thought, she cast out desperately for an anchor of some sort. She found one.

“Yui…my name is Ikari Yui.”

It was then she could put name to the pain that surged through her. Her son. He needed her. Why and how, she did not try to understand, did not, as she stretched out her hand towards him. The broken ends and shards met, and the wounds began to heal, a new bond forming. Joy washed through them both, their bodies singing with the gladness of it…

And the world turned upside down.

*****

She awoke. There was no blackness now. Reaching out one hand, she felt for something, and met hard, unyielding, metal.

Wait. She had other senses. Slowly, ever so slowly, like a newborn child, she cracked open one eyelid, then the other. The same red liquid. Her ears noted a steady pulse in the background, her tongue a slight stuffiness. Where was she? Drawing the outstretched hand down, she caught a handle.

A handle…voices. She heard, faintly, voices.

Coming to a decision, she yanked down. Once. Hard. Light spilled it, and she lurched out of what she now knew to be the cockpit of Evangelion Unit 1, into…

A new world…

*****


End file.
